Last week, analysts Tony Sacconagui at Bernstein Research looked at quarterly financial numbers from Apple and AT&T, looked again, and did a little bit of head-scratching. Apple claims to have sold 3.7 million iPhones to date, but AT&T claimed to have activated only 2 million iPhones. Although the figures don’t account for some inaccuracies and iPhones that had been purchased over the end-of-year holidays but not yet activated, the figures seemed to indicate that at whopping 1.4 million of the iPhone sold to date are either sitting in inventory, being used in a phone-free “iPod touch” mode until buyer’s wireless contracts expired…or that purchasers have deliberately unlocked the iPhones to re-sell or for use on networks other than AT&T.
Digital Trends
